Crab Meadow Pop Up Exhibit of Wake of the Dutchman

Virginia Mallon, exhibiting her series “Wake of the Dutchman” at a Pop-Up Exhibit hosted by S. Scherer & Sons 104 Waterside Road, Northport, NY from August 26 through Labor Day Weekend.

Weary ships telling old tales, patiently waiting for new life on the north most end of the island.

There is a longstanding tale in my family that we are, through my maternal grandmother, related to John Paul Jones, founder of the United States Navy.
The stories may very well be true, given my lifelong obsession with a watery muse.  I have, in one way or another, been courting the sea since I was a child. Studying oceanography in high school and painting all sorts of crustaceans and sea life during the beginning stages of my artistic career, are early hints of a future filled with sea and sand. Even my hometown, many years later, perched on the edge of a small wetland called Crab Meadow, leads me right back down to water’s edge. Masefield’s poem:

“I must go down to the
seas again, to the lonely sea and sky,
and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to
lead her by…”

speaks to my heart as I wander the coastal towns from Long Island to Maine snooping in tidal pools, estuaries, harbors, and shipyards for new discoveries.

Shipyards are a favorite place to wander on early winter evenings. Alone, on a deserted pier, ships resting for the season, you can feel the lonesome calls of Dutchman, her souls traveling on the horizon’s fata morgana forever. Cobalt, periwinkle, and ochre are worn well, on ships who like cats, have lived many lives. Here on the north most end of the north fork, an old flotilla repose in a quiet purgatory. Riggings torn, rudders warped, these grand dames rest in a netherworld the color of earth and sky. In the wake of the Dutchman, they lie in wait, impatient to be reborn. Eager for the westerly winds to lift their sails and return them to their ocean home. Quiet ears can hear their tales of days gone by in the whisper of the wind and the change of tides. Patient wabi-sabi is revealed in in the beauty of transience. Some of them are here for only a season, before their hulls are repaired and they set sail again.

Others remain, like me, year after year, waiting for the call to take them home.